Upcoming Features of GNOME 3.8

Even if GNOME 3.6 has not yet been released, the GNOME developers published some of the features that will be implemented in the next major release of the desktop environment, GNOME 3.8.

According to the GNOME developers, it looks like GNOME 3.8 will fix or even drop the Fallback Mode, because it has become less and less useful and because it does not work as it should. More details can be found here.

Moreover, focus-caret tracking mechanism will be implemented in GNOME Shell, meaning that the current methods, which rely on Orca, will be dropped. A prototype has already been implemented on September 5th.

In GNOME 3.8, the GNOME Shell extensions will update automatically, which might be integrated with the updated system. Last but not least, the Videos app (previously known as Totem) will see a major redesign to its user interface.

We have no idea when the first development release will be out, or when the final version of the GNOME 3.8 desktop environment will see the light of day, but it should be sometime next spring.